9/11 anniversary: how the evidence was hidden and destroyed

Presumption of a Cover-Up

Judges and lawyers know that – if someone intentionally destroys evidence – he’s probably trying to hide his crime. American law has long recognized that destruction of evidence raises a presumption of guilt for the person who destroyed the evidence.

So what does it mean when the US government intentionally destroyed massive amounts of evidence related to 9/11?

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

Pentagon Fibs

The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements.

Soviet-Style “Minders”

The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this).

In other words, the minders obstructed witnesses from openly and candidly talking about what they knew.

The administration then starved the commission of funds. The government spent $175 million – over $300 million in today’s dollars – investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster. It spent $152 million on the the Columbia disaster investigation. It spent $30 million investigating the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But the government only authorized $15 million for the 9/11 Commission.

The most gagged person in the history of the United States of America.

Famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that Edmonds possesses information “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. He also says that the White House has ordered the press not to cover Edmonds:

I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to ‘How do we deal with Sibel [Edmonds]?

The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn’t get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told “don’t touch this . . . .”

And the government has gone to extraordinary lengths to prosecute and harass whistleblowers and journalists who write stories questioning government narratives. (And see this and this.)

Black Boxes

Saudi Role

Investigation into Saudi government aid to 9/11 conspirators was also obstructed.

For example, Philip Shenon – the 20-year New York Times reporter who wrote a book on the 9/11 Commission – reports:

The [911] commissioner said the renewed public debate could force a spotlight on a mostly unknown chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of the panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was presented in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that Saudi officials – especially at lower levels of the government – were part of an al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after they arrived in the US.In fact, there were repeated showdowns, especially over the Saudis, between the staff and the commission’s hard-charging executive director, University of Virginia historian Philip Zelikow, who joined the Bush administration as a senior adviser to the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, after leaving the commission. The staff included experienced investigators from the FBI, the Department of Justice and the CIA, as well as the congressional staffer who was the principal author of the 28 pages.

Zelikow fired a staffer, who had repeatedly protested over limitations on the Saudi investigation, after she obtained a copy of the 28 pages outside of official channels. Other staffers described an angry scene late one night, near the end of the investigation, when two investigators who focused on the Saudi allegations were forced to rush back to the commission’s offices after midnight after learning to their astonishment that some of the most compelling evidence about a Saudi tie to 9/11 was being edited out of the report or was being pushed to tiny, barely readable footnotes and endnotes. The staff protests were mostly overruled.

Indeed, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House.

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

The government has also refused to release the computer models showing how the trade centers fell, making it impossible for anyone to double-check its assumptions.

Whether you believe the Twin Towers and World Trade Center building 7 were brought down with explosives or by airplanes and fires, destroying evidence prevented engineers and scientists from figuring out what went wrong … to prevent skyscrapers from collapsing in the future.

In addition, the government has refused to release many of the videos and photographs taken on 9/11 in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) inquiries. And lawyers and researchers who have reviewed videos produced by the government in response to FOIA requests have told Washington’s Blog that the government produced intentionally degraded versions which make it impossible to see or hear details.

9/11 Commissioners Disgusted … and Call For a New Investigation

The 9/11 Commissioners publicly expressed anger at cover ups and obstructions of justice by the government into a real 9/11 investigation:

The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, “Whatever trail was left was left deliberately — for the F.B.I. to chase“.

But don’t spend too much time thinking about it … after all, your government would never lie to you.